The monks, on their side, lost no time in sending their preacher and the sub-Prior to Rome, in order to get the Pope's attestation of their story. They were supported by the whole influence of the Dominican Order throughout Central Europe. The Rath of Bern then also sent to Rome to demand an impartial judge for the matter, and Pope Julius II. nominated a commission consisting of three priests and a Dominican Provincial. The latter, being seen by one of the bishops admonishing Dr. Steffan how to act, was removed from the court, and died at Constance from vexation. The four monks were then placed on the rack, and revealed everything. The poor novice was also given a few turns on the rack, in order to make sure that he had told all he knew. He rehearsed everything, including the story of the girls. It came out in the course of the trial that Jews' blood, nineteen hairs from the black eyebrow of a Jew child, and other ingredients, which our modest Sebastian informs us "it were not seemly to tell of," went to constitute the magical decoction that the monks had used in order to make the novice subservient to them. It was found also that the sub-Prior had stolen five hundred gulden from the monastic chest, and that the other monks had taken the precious stones from the image of the Virgin and disposed of them, also that the Prior had boasted that he could work his will with any woman on whom he laid his hand. The bishops wanted to transfer the matter to Rome, but the lay authorities would not hear of this, and insisted on the court being reinforced by eight honourable councillors of the city. In the end the ecclesiastics consented to reconstitute the court in this form. The result was a sentence of degradation and burning alive on all four monks. The execution was carried out in the presence of a large concourse of people in the great market-place of the city of Bern, on the 31st of May, 1509. As intimated in the body of this work, the foregoing affair caused a profound impression over a wide area, affecting as it did the honour and integrity of so powerful an Order as that of the "Preachers" or Dominicans, and it made the city and canton of Bern an easy prey to the reforming tendencies which came in vogue a few years later. * * * * * The following is another illustration of the ready credulity of a mediæval populace and the excessive excitability of the public mind in the earlier years of the sixteenth century. I quote, this time literally, from another portion of Sebastian Franck's _Chronica_: